The Wichita economy, according to Milken Institute

The performance of the Wichita-area economy, compared to other large cities, is on a downward trend.

While good news for the Wichita metropolitan area economy is becoming more frequent, it’s important to compare how Wichita is doing relative to other cities. The Milken Institute produces ranking of cities based on their economic performance in its Best-Performing Cities project.

The ranking are composed of a number of factors such as short-term and long-term job growth, short-term and long-term wage and salary growth, growth of high-tech industry, and high-tech location quotient.¹ Milken also notes: “Best-Performing Cities is solely an outcomes-based index. It does not incorporate input measures (business costs, cost-of-living components, and quality-of-life conditions, such as commute times or crime rates). These measures, although important, are prone to wide variations and can be highly subjective.”²

I’ve gathered data from the Milken project for Wichita. The data starts in 2003, the first year for which data is available. The data in the table is the rank for Wichita among 200 large metropolitan areas. The best rank is 1, while the worst is 200. In the line chart for each data series, I’ve inverted the data so that the best performance is at the top.

As the charts show, for overall ranking, Wichita has been declining for some time.

This does not mean the Wichita-area economy is on the decline. But it means the relative performance of Wichita has not kept up with other cities. As can be seen in the chart of Wichita, Kansas, and U.S. non-farm employment, Wichita employment is rising. But it isn’t rising as fast as the nation, as can be seen in the widening gap between Wichita and the nation since 2010.

Of note, Wichita economic development agencies rely on Milken data.^{3 4}

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Notes